Keep this for the way back, her grandmother wrote. The token was no longer accepted on the ferry when Mae found it inside a birthday card. Her grandmother had died before posting the envelope.
The ferry office identified the token as one issued decades earlier. It had been kept as a keepsake, not purchased for Mae's journey. On the card, the rest of the message asked her to visit more often without giving up the life she was building elsewhere.
Mae took the token on her next crossing but paid the current fare. At the far bank, she met an aunt who remembered receiving the same instruction as a child. Their grandmother used the phrase whenever someone left, even after paper tickets replaced the tokens.
Mae kept it in her purse rather than treating it as a promise she could literally redeem. The object could not buy a return journey. It could remind her to choose one. On the boat home, she wrote her aunt a date for the next visit before the bank disappeared behind the reeds.